First off, the date that stands out now is Jan. 20 – not Jan. 9, which had been the date that the state could start issuing its first sports betting licenses. But the state also agreed to give 30-day notice to the court and to the leagues of any such granting – which takes us past Jan. 20 at this point. (Translation: Don’t book that February Super Bowl betting party at Monmouth Park just yet.)

The famed Inauguration Day date is noteworthy for two reasons:

- it’s the deadline set by Shipp for the federal government to intervene in the case.

- it just so happens that in Shipp’s order last night, he set the timetable for a hearing as “after Jan. 20.”

This means that either the leagues’ attorneys will have to squeeze in a bit in the court to make room for their counterparts at the Department of Justice – or they won’t.

While the state hardly is likely to want to see the ‘feds’ on hand, they already know they have one way to make the D of J attorneys squirm a bit. Way back in 1991, that department had written a letter to former Senator and current Vice President Joseph Biden expressing serious concerns about the constitutionality of the very law that was passed a year later (Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992) and purports to prevent 46 states from offering sports betting.

Judge Shipp has no easy way out of this case: not conferring standing to the leagues would have been controversial, but having passed on that one, he now runs squarely into an unavoidable issue: the entire case rests on whether Congress’ law is constitutional.

Heady stuff for a “rookie” U.S. District Court Judge who has only six months in office. And even if he ultimately defers to Congress’s will here, that would mean that the Jersey native would be the one to prevent economic activity from proceeding legally that was backed by 64 percent of voters in a referendum; an even greater margin in a Democratically-controlled legislature; and enthusiastically signed by a Republican Governor.

Of course, given the stakes and the star power of attorneys on both sides, let’s not rule out appeals galore.